


Stray

by orphan_account



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:16:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I have faced ten times worse than you," he tells the silver-muzzled tabby sagely. Shepard swears loudly. He narrows his eyes and the cat blinks lazily in response. "Yes. It is a daily occurrence."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray

**Author's Note:**

> also posted on my tumblr

A brown tabby cat sits at the windowsill; it has one wide, golden eye milky with age and the fur around its nose growing in patches of grey and silver. The creature looks somewhere between a distinguished, well-loved pet and a stray on its last legs. Javik considers the cat quietly as he listens to Shepard fumbling around the room and cursing every time she fumbles with the paper-thin dress Tali'Zorah bought her the week after she was released from the hospital, half as a joke made with a lilting laugh and half a plea with heavy hands and stretches of silence filled with stories Javik did not feel privy to. It stares back at him, single eye seeming to flick over him in subtle, precise judgement. The tabby yawns, exposing a cracked front canine and the beginnings of too much yellow along its other sharp, tiny teeth. It tucks its paws beneath its chest and looks expectantly up at Javik with a narrowed yellow eye.

The expression, Javik almost tells the cat, is too familiar for him to fear it.

"I have faced ten times worse than you," he tells the silver-muzzled tabby sagely. Shepard swears loudly. He narrows his eyes and the cat blinks lazily in response. "Yes. It is a daily occurrence."

" _Who the fuck are you talking to_?"

Shepard's words crack faintly in the muggy, mid-July air. He shifts just enough to see Shepard reaching to pull the back of her dress's zipper the rest of the way up. "Are you in need of assistance?"

"No," she snaps quickly. The tabby's tail twitches and it yawns again. "And you never answered me." Shepard sways forward. She throws out a hand and winces when her palm hits the wall. "Who the hell are you talking to?" Her words shake. Javik can see tears welling in her eyes.

She brushes them away absently and begins fumbling with her pill bottles instead. He exchanges a look with the tabby as if to say "it is an improvement." He locks his fingers together and fixes his gaze fully back on the cat again as it closes its eye to doze in the fading sunlight.

Javik turns back, looks at the curve of Shepard's neck and the loose fit of a dress that should have fit her snugly. (Tali'Zorah had given him piles of clothes from the ship when the Normandy had docked for further repairs and before the quarian had caught transport back to Rannoch. "She'll need them," she'd offered calmly. Javik had not commented on the clothes that had still had tags attached.) The tabby yawns and all Javik can focus on is the flash of its broken tooth.

"You have a visitor, Shepard."

She turns, the angle hides the still pink scars that ride high on her cheekbones and stretch from the bridge of her nose to the edge of her ear. Shepard blinks. "A visitor."

"Yes."  She gets to her feet slowly and she puts her left foot forward first as her right leg shakes. "Oh." A smile curves along her cracked lips. Her zipper is still only half up. Javik sets a hand on her side when she draws close enough. The smile pulls up enough to show a dimple along the corner of her mouth. She stands before him, hip cocked to one side, her shaking leg pressed against the inside of his knee as he presses his hand flat against her back.

The cat stretches forward, little claws digging into the loose paint along the sill before opening its mouth to meow. Shepard slides her window open and makes a quiet noise at the back of her throat at the one-eyed cat. It purrs and nuzzles into her hand.

Javik yanks the zipper up and keeps his palm along her back. He lets his finger tips brush gently over her exposed skin.

Shepard scratches behind the cat's ears.

"I have observed you have a habit of adopting strays," Javik says wryly. He can taste Shepard's laughter along the back of his tongue. The cat blinks drowsily at the both of them.  Shepard is smiling when she wraps her fingers around Javik's wrist.

"I never knew you to be self depreciating, Javik."

Javik sniffs haughtily. 

(He still lets himself be led to the kitchen when Shepard asks the tabby if it wants dinner.)


End file.
